This is my per play session playthrough experience with the video game Saints Row: The Third. I gather it will be a completely insane experience. I knew nothing of Saints Row 1 or 2 when I played this... Go back to the beginning!

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Saintsbook (Experience 5)

A supposedly quick (and intentionally designed) way to earn money is to look in the Saintsbook for tasks to accomplish. This includes a number of types of tasks. I opted for two assassination missions. Facebook should really investigate creating a criminal activity based social network. Advertising revenue could be huge because SAINTS ROW THE THIRD IS NOT A PARODY OF REALITY IT IS A MIRROR IMAGE. There I said it. Let it soak in. I earned 18k by flying a stolen helicopter by some smoke stacks IN REAL LIFE. Paypal me some cash and you too can join my pyramid scheme! I am not from Nigeria so this is on the up and up.

I have yet to meet Mr. Roller. The real shocker is the implication that Wrestling is fixed. Shame on you Volition. SHAME.

Karl was a joke. He drove around in a cart from the airport and put up nearly no resistance. He was a quick job, with the exception of having to drive to the airport only to find him on the opposite side of the airport. Along the way I angered some Rescorts so they just had to tail and annoy me. I was very easy to catch as I was driving an airport cart as well...

Light up the night! Apparently Karl was an alien with napalm based blood.

SA'int Barbie helping keep the Rescorts at bay.

SA'int Barbie stayed with me for both missions. While useful she also seemed to end up “near-dead” requiring me to revive her often.The revive system is welcome in this game. Any extra distraction for your enemies to shoot at (as in extra allies) improves your chances of survival. There might be some risk depending on the type of opponent present when you revive your "homie." It is a bit like Left 4 Dead. Can you really risk the hoard of gang members attacking you to help an ally? In general yes, depending on how many of the really nasty gang members are after your hide. You also have plenty of time to help them up. By default it is 30 seconds (I believe) and it can be upgraded to give you a little extra time.

SA'int Barbie is too critical to the operation to let die!

Things definitely heated up while fighting the Luchadores (this is the gang's actual name so that ought to cut down on any confusion). One of their more mean punks uses some kind of multi-grenade launcher. This made things a bit more difficult than battles with the Rescorts (arguably the easiest of the groups until their Team Fortress 2 heavy shows up).

The fallen traffic light is a common theme in these messy scenes.

With a bit more firepower and help from the SA'ints I opted to take on the Copies in a battle by the airport. Things definitely went better but the helicopters are quite obnoxious. Snipers blast lead from afar while you try to dodge drunk-driving SWAT members and HMVs with mounted machine guns. A few well placed grenades can definitely help in this kind of situation.As for the helicopters, a number of shots from my exploding ammunition based pistols restored balance to the universe.

UNETHICAL and DISHONORABLE shot from behind. NOTE: It is easy to die in this game.

Survival celebration jump after surviving three of seven waves! Note the Cop flying upside down off in the distance.

By the third (of seven) wave things were already nasty. It definitely became a matter of purely survival. Some of these wave battles are timer based requiring survival or are body count based (the easier of the two). Instead of worrying about taking out Copies I would generally run for a big armored vehicle. After climbing aboard I slammed my way through cars and attempted to recover any fallen SA'ints.

After my seven wave victory I decided that my gang of purple clad lambs were finally ready to be called Saints. I drove over to Planet Saints to check out the new clothing options and went for a agent/detective look.